Students and community members are circulating a petition to change Humboldt State University’s mascot, Lucky the Lumberjack, to something else.

Jack Nounnan, who describes himself as an “Earth Firster,” is one of the individuals involved in the effort. Nounnan, who has been involved in environmental advocacy for decades, said the mascot embodies characteristics he’d like to see displaced.

“The Lumberjack is such a good label to bring people to understand that we’ve been carrying on in a romantic myth,” he said. “It’s a lot about the fact that we’re all indoctrinated … we do not need to take down forests like we do anymore.”

The mascot represents the prioritization of industry over the environment, Nounnan said, something he hopes will begin to change with small steps like the petition he is helping circulate.

“We put the economy and jobs first before we think consciously,” he said. “We don’t quite see the truth … we’re trying to make a new kind of understanding so we live by different ways.”

The lumberjack is emblematic of the timber industry’s influence on the university, which normalizes practices such as “clear cutting” in the forestry department, Nounnan said.

HSU student Chad Friefeld, who has taken forestry classes at the university, supports replacing the university’s mascot for several reasons.

“The forestry practices activists like myself take issue with, such as herbicide use and ‘clear-cutting,’ are taught as legitimate, sustainable forest management practices,” he wrote in an email. “HSU plays a direct role in how future foresters view themselves, the industry, the forests, and which practices they see as being acceptable.”

There is a connection between the role of HSU and the forestry department and their complicity with destructive forestry practices that have, and still are being committed by, logging companies in Humboldt County, Friefeld said.

When contacted by the Times-Standard, the university noted that similar efforts have occurred in the past, but did not have any further comment on the issue.

Gary Rynearson, a spokesperson for Green Diamond Resource Co., said in an email the “professors and instructors that I know at HSU are individuals that care about the sustainability of the environment and their students.”

“As a native of Arcata and a HSU forestry graduate, to me, the Lumberjack reflects the local history and the rugged nature of the North Coast,” he said. “HSU and its linkage with the local community also developed an environmental awareness that has influenced national policy … (now) the natural resources programs include holistic approaches to resource management.”

Rynearson said Green Diamond harvests less than 1.5 percent of their timberlands annually using “even-aged management,” adding that herbicides are applied, using backpack spraying, only when needed to control competing brush and invasive vegetation.

“The last I Iooked, the Lumberjack was not teaching courses at HSU — it is a mascot.,” he said.

Friefeld, however, maintains that HSU’s mascot has become an antiquated symbol that no longer represents HSU or the student body. Friefeld argues that history is written in books. Statues, symbols and mascots are designed for things to be honored and revered, he said.

“HSU styles itself as an environmentally-friendly and responsible school that claims to be dedicated to social justice, (students) are becoming increasingly diverse, and it’s predominantly female,” he said. “Yet we have a mascot that’s supposed to symbolize all of us being a white-bearded man who chops down trees.”

Additionally, Friefeld said, the early timber industry not only devastated the environment but was also complicit in the violent theft of land from the tribes who live here. The initiative isn’t about forcing people to bend to a different tune, he said, but rather to challenge others to think a bit differently.

“I understand the affinity and loyalty people have to the industry that provided them their livelihood,” he said. “But this is about acknowledging the legacy of these symbols, what they mean to groups that are marginalized, and how to build a unified culture that’s truly inclusive.”

As an alternative, Friefeld said several people have proposed the Humboldt marten. But the petition is focused on recognizing the problem with the current mascot, he said.

“It’s to get people to acknowledge the lumberjack is a problem so we can come together find a symbol we can all identify with,” he said.